The law plays a central role in Islam and yet, the law is also the least understood aspect of the Islamic faith by Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
In the West, for example, some even go as far as thinking that a Muslim who believes in Shari'a law is by definition a fanatic or fundamentalist. Yet to accuse every Muslim who believes in Islamic law of fanaticism is akin to accusing every Jew who believes in Rabbinic or Talmudic law of being a fanatic as well.
The truth is that so much hinges on the particular conception that one has of Islamic law and the interpretation that one follows.
Islamic law is derived from two distinct sources: the Qur'an and the traditions of the Prophet (known as the hadith and Sunna). The Sunna is the orally transmitted record of what the Prophet said or did during his lifetime, as well as various reports about the Prophet's companions. Traditions purporting to quote the Prophet verbatim on any matter are known as hadith. The Sunna, however, is a broader term: it refers to the hadith as well as to narratives purporting to describe the conduct of the Prophet and his companions in a variety of settings and contexts.
The Qur'anIn Islam, the Qur'an occupies a unique and singular status as the literal word of God. Muslims believe that the Qur'an is the literal word of God as transmitted by the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. When it comes to the Qur'an, the Prophet Muhammad did nothing more than communicate word for word God's revelation and Muslims preserved the text and transmitted it in its original form and language to subsequent generations.
Muslims believe that God warranted and promised to guard the text of the Qur'an from any possible alterations, revisions, deletions or redactions, and therefore, while Muslims may disagree about the meaning and import of the revelation, there is a broad consensus among Muslims on the integrity of the text.
The Muslim belief in the integrity of the text of the Qur'an is well-supported historically, but the meaning and context of the text is a far more complicated matter. At times the Qur'an addresses itself to the Prophet, specifically, but on other occasions the Qur'an speaks to all Muslims or to humanity at large. In different contexts, the Qur'an will address Jews or Christians or the polytheists.
The SunnaAfter the Qur'an, most Muslims consider the Sunna of the Prophet as the second most authoritative source of Islam. The Sunna is represented by an amorphous body of literature containing hundreds of reports about the Prophet and his companions during the various stages of early Islamic history. Although the Qur'an and Sunna are considered the two primary sources of Islamic theology and law, there are material differences between them.
Unlike the Qur'an, the Sunna is not represented by a single agreed-upon text. The Sunna is scattered in at least six primary texts (Bukhari, Muslim, Nisa'i, Tirmidhi, Ibn Maja, Abu Dawud) and many other secondary texts (such as Musnad Ahmad, Ibn Hayyan, Ibn Khuzayma). In addition, there are several collections of Sunna and hadith that are particularly authoritative among Shi'i Muslims (like al-Kafi, al-Wasa'il).
Unlike the Qur'an, the Sunna was not recorded and written during the Prophet's lifetime. The Sunna was not systematically collected and documented for at least two centuries after the death of the Prophet. Although some documentation movements commenced in the first century of Islam, the main efforts at systematic collection and documentation did not start until the third century of the Islamic era (ninth century of the Christian era).
The late documentation of the Sunna meant that many of the reports attributed to the Prophet are apocryphal or at least are of dubious historical authenticity. In fact, one of the most complex disciplines in Islamic jurisprudence is one which attempts to differentiate between authentic and inauthentic traditions. Furthermore, reports attributed to the Prophet are not simply adjudged authentic or fabricated - such reports are thought of as having various degrees of authenticity depending on the extent to which a researcher is confident that the Prophet actually performed a certain act or actually made a particular statement.
Therefore, according to Muslim scholars, traditions could range from the highest to the lowest level of authenticity. Although Muslim scholars have tended to believe that they could ascertain whether the Prophet actually authored a particular tradition, the authorship of traditions is historically complicated. Many traditions are the end product of a cumulative development that took place through a protracted historical process, and therefore, these traditions often give expression to socio-political dynamics that occurred many years after the death of the Prophet.
Aside from the issue of authenticity, there are several other ways that the Sunna is different from the Qur'an. The style and language of the Sunna is very distinct and different - while the Qur'an is poetical, melodic and lyrical, the Sunna is not.
Furthermore, the range of topics and issues addressed by the Sunna are much more sweeping than in the Qur'an. The Qur'an is primarily concerned with ethics and morality; the Sunna, however, contains everything ranging from enunciations of moral principles, to detailed prescriptions on various matters of personal and social conduct, to mythology and historical narratives. Not all of the Sunna can easily translate into a set of straightforward normative commands, and therefore, Muslim jurists argued that parts of the Sunna are intended as legislative and binding, while other parts are simply descriptive and for the most part, not binding.
Most importantly, the huge body of literature that embodies the Sunna is complex and generally inaccessible to the lay person. In order to systematically and comprehensively analyse what the Sunna, as a whole, has to say on a particular topic requires a considerable amount of technical knowledge and training. In part, this is due to the fact that the Sunna literature reflects a rather wide array of conflicting and competing ideological orientations and outlooks that exist in tension with each other.
Selective and non-systematic approaches to the Sunna produce determinations that are extremely imbalanced and that are highly skewed in favour of a particular ideological orientation or another. And yet, such selective and imbalanced treatments of the Sunna of the Prophet are commonplace in the contemporary Muslim world.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that many of the basic rituals of Islam were derived from the Sunna traditions. In addition, the Sunna helps in contextualizing the Qur'anic revelation, and also in understanding the historical framework and role of the Islamic message. Consequently, it is not possible to simply ignore this formidable oral tradition, or focus exclusively on the Qur'an, without doing serious damage to the structure of the Islamic religion as a whole.
There is no question that the Qur'an and Sunna occupy a highly authoritative position in the Islamic faith, and that they are boundless and illimitable sources for thinking about ethics, morality, law and wisdom. But as sources of guidance, they are also multi-layered and multi-faceted, and when the Qur'an and Sunna are considered together, they tell a complex story.
They can be a source of profound intellectual and moral guidance and empowerment. However the opposite is also true and dangerously so: if approached with the wrong intellectual and moral commitments, or even if approached from within a hedonistic and non-committal moral framework, they could contribute to a process of ethical and intellectual stagnation, if not deterioration and putrefaction.
For instance, the Sunna contains a large number of traditions that could be very empowering to women, but it also contains an equally large number of traditions that are demeaning and deprecating towards women. To engage the Sunna on this subject, analyse it systematically, interpret it consistently with the Qur'an, and to read it in such a fashion that would promote, and not undermine, the ethical objectives of Islam calls for a well-informed and sagaciously balanced intellectual and moral outlook.
